Projects & Partnerships of the Staten Island Urban Center are designed to strengthen our fast growing and changing community with one essential thread in all of our work, that is community involvement. Our aim is to enhance quality of life in our neighborhoods by organizing and collaborating with various partners around the table and onto taking action.

Youth Development through Music:Brighton Heights Reformed Church Youth Orchestra

By supporting the BHRC Youth Orchestra, we believe music builds strong character in youth through the practice of discipline, focus and the experiences of musicianship leading to a positive peer environment and confident lifestyle. BHRC Youth Orchestra is a youth music program that involves young people in learning to play an instrument and to be part of a team. ​Together with Brighton Heights Reformed Church and under the direction of the skilled and talented Yvette Washington Wheatley, a 30 year veteran music teacher, young people are challenged to do their best in ways that go beyond musicality. The Staten Island Urban Center supports the orchestra program organizing program activities, transportation, fundraising, performances and sharing of educational resources for the young musicians. ​

Community Development:Let's Rebuild Cromwell Community Coalition

Born out of the Youth Committee of Community Board No. 1 Staten Island and the cries of hundreds of people around the borough, in 2015 the Let's Rebuild Cromwell Community Coalition was born. The coalition began with one goal---to reconstruct the Cromwell Recreation Center to not only its former splendor, but to drastically improve the facilities in such a way that it becomes one of the premier, state of the art recreation facilities in all of New York City that will be accessible to anyone living in the five boroughs . Today, the Coalition also focuses on advocating for the development of a Maritime Education and Recreation Corridor also known as MERC. ​

​Youth Leadership Development:Youth Social Justice, Enrichment & CollaborationYouth Leadership Development is at the core of the future. We are developing youth leaders by exposing and involving them in doing good works, creating positive change in communities and schools, exploring a larger world outside of Staten Island, the city and country, understanding history and using discovery as a seed for building leadership.

​Through partnerships with groups such as the Brighton Heights Reformed Church Youth Ministry, Staten Island NAACP Education Committee, Community Board No. 1 Youth Committee, Future of Our Schools Subcommittee of the St. George Civic Association, the Staten Island Early Childhood Education Collaborative and others the SI Urban Center has been a catalyst in creating an agenda for the north shore community on youth.

​In 2015 we were instrumental in helping to bring resources such as the Youth Build program to Staten Island. We continue to advocate for other youth leadership development program models that help young people find their voice as they participate in making a difference not only in their community, but also in their own lives.

Maritime Education & Recreation Corridor

​The Let’s Rebuild Cromwell Community Coalition proposes the development of the north shore Maritime Education & Recreation Corridor, also known as MERC. This special corridor will provide a cohesive guide for shaping important public service delivery and accessibility surrounding the St. George/Stapleton waterfront development. With the Cromwell Recreation Center as the hub, the MERC proposal provides opportunities such as open fields for baseball and soccer; indoor and outdoor pool with a winter hockey rink; a retrofitted docked vessel to be used as a learning marina to teach about the ecology of the water environment, a home for the Billion Oyster Project, a maritime related school, recreational water activities like fishing and kayaking and a connection to Tompkinsville Park as a maritime themed park.​ ​

​Our Urban Town shares voices from the community of Staten Island’s north shore. Too often our mysterious island is misquoted, misunderstood and forgotten in the midst of current events and news stories of New York City. We felt it was important to have a grassroots media outlet that would be inclusive, out of the box, current and intellectually provocative to publish the opinions, ideas and thoughts of this very ethnically and economically diverse neighborhood.